Hitherto, in the nuclear industry, the cleaning of an irradiating contaminated cell could only be carried out by the direct intervention within the cell of a large number of people directly carrying out the degradation of the surface to be cleaned. However, this solution is not available when the highly irradiating state and the very high degree of contamination of a cell prevents any direct human intervention therein. Moreover, even when human interventions within the cell are not entirely impossible, they lead to the personnel absorbing significant dosage levels which should be avoided. Moreover, such interventions makes it necessary to store the waste material produced by the degradation of the surface in intermediate receptacles placed within the cell, before the said waste material can be treated and stored in a definitive manner.
The present invention specifically relates to an installation, whose original design makes it possible to carry out both the remote cleaning by degradation of a surface in a hostile medium and the automatic recovery and treatment of the waste produced by said degradation, which makes it possible to allow intervention in all cases, no matter what the degree of contamination of a cell, without any human intervention other than that required by the punctual maintenance of the installation and the means incorporated into the latter. In addition, said installation makes it possible to directly treat and store the waste without passage into intermediate receptacles.